


Ten Little Phibians or, Mission to Nowhere

by executrix



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Angst, Fusion, M/M, canon levels of character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-22 22:47:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6096429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fusion with Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None," particularly the 2015 version. Takes place after episode 1.12, "Deliverance," with elements of 1.13, "Orac," and 2.10, "Voice from the Past." Too bad there's already an episode called "Countdown."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten Little Phibians or, Mission to Nowhere

INVITATION

Blake bit down harder on his forefinger and pondered the options before him. They seemed worse than ever. He felt defensive about all the places they could have bought some anti-radiation drugs before the Cephlon affair, but how could he think of every possible thing that might have done wrong? The crew—or at least one of them—were far from sparing in their critique, so why did *he* have to think of everything? And what was the best place to get treatment for his ailing crewmembers? 

Then a message came, which at least offered a moment’s relief from anxiety. The message was a distress call. Distress calls were a guilty pleasure for Blake: although he took no pleasure in other people’s jeopardy, he was glad when he could be of immediate help. In this case, the request was a singularly modest one. Blake replayed the message a few times. The body of the text was clear enough, but there was a crackle of static at the signature line. Something, something, Owen. Blake smiled. The obvious allusion to the originator of the cooperative model showed that the message was a legitimate one, from an ally. “Everyone to the Flight Deck, at once,” he said. “I have some some good news!”

Vila blinked. Gan looked distinctly unwell, and his usual garments weren’t flattering. Both Jenna and Avon were oddly dressed. Jenna, perhaps trying for “pale and interesting,” wore a black polo-neck, wide-legged scarlet corduroy trousers, and a white belt. Avon went in the other direction, with an aquamarine tunic over a yellow shirt and pale grey trousers. Vila wondered if there was suntan-stuff in the Wardrobe Room, or if Avon had borrowed it and the eyeliner from Jenna. Vila wore pajamas printed with chili peppers, a plaid dressing gown, and fur-lined slippers, because he really didn’t think it mattered anymore and at least his feet were warm.

Cally, the only other healthy crewmember, was the only one who had been asleep. She was still buttoning her green shirt and yawning as she arrived at the meeting.  
“Aristo,” Blake said, when they gathered. “A place called Phibian’s Head Island off the main continent. It’s a research station, so there are bound to be anti-radiation drugs about.” Avon stared at him. “Very well, there are likely to be anti-radiation drugs. They’ve issued a distress call.”

“Naturally you are excited,” Avon said. “As there’s a shortage of distress here, we must go haring off somewhere where it is available.”

“The lead researcher—a chap named Ensor—has an artificial heart. Its power cells are failing, but fortunately the cells are of a type we have plenty of and can easily spare. But we’ve got to get there quickly. Ensor has created some sort of device that he says the Federation will give a hundred million credits for. He says he’d rather they didn’t get it, and he’ll swap for the power cells. Oh, and he says that Shivan has fetched up there at the facility, and would be grateful for transport. He’s a comrade of mine from the Freedom Party days. Apparently his health is in a bad way, so either we can treat him here or transport him to a medical facility.”

“It’s a fine day for adages,” Avon said. “The shoemaker’s children always go barefoot. But, more significantly, if something seems too good to be true, it isn’t.” 

“I’m not prepared to stick here and do nothing,” Blake said. “I’m going. Avon, if you think it’s a trap, you stay here,” Blake pleaded. “The rest of you, come with me. If I’m right, you can take care of the ship until we need to teleport back with Shivan and perhaps Ensor. And if you’re right, then the Liberator will be yours, just as you always said you wanted.”

Avon turned his head slowly, as if he were seeing a panorama of the Flight Deck for the first time or the last. “’The condemned man made a hearty breakfast’? Yes, I suppose it is a munificent last request. She was drifting when we found her. No doubt she will drift to someone else in turn.”

Cally needed no persuading to undertake the mission. Jenna shrugged. “Give me the coordinates for Phibian’s Head Island, Blake. I should hate to die of boredom, and anything else might be better.” 

Vila and Gan exchanged a look. Gan had said out loud that he needed other people, Vila hadn’t *said* it. There was some comfort in numbers. 

TEN  
“What does a Phibian’s head look like, even?” Vila asked, then answered his own question because no one was listening. “Sort of blobby and with a muzzle, I expect.” He tightened his other hand over his teleport bracelet, it was just the sort of time when the buggering things fell off.

“Well, there’s the house,” Gan said, grateful that they had teleported onto the path quite near the house, rather than having to take the steep trek up from the beach. Blake, his heart torn by his friends’ difficulties in walking up even a small slope, felt impatient to bound ahead.

They had gone only a short way when they were greeted by two maids in long black dresses topped with starched, frilled white aprons and lace-trimmed caps.   
“Please join us,” they chorused. 

Blake squinted at the house. Most of the windows looked dark, like sunglasses hiding blind eyes. There was a feeble glow at a few windows. “Has the house been shut up?” he asked. “We’re expected, you know.”

“The house is not closed,” one of them said. Her face was so still, and her voice so flat, that Blake wondered if she were hard of hearing, and found speech a chore. 

“But a storm is coming, and that always interferes with the electrics. It takes some time for the generator to start up.” 

“Come along,” the other maid said. 

Blake and his crew exchanged looks. Blake shrugged, thinking that they should explore the situation more thoroughly from inside the house. “Stick together,” he whispered. 

“I’m eager to meet Mr.—or Miss! Owen, the message wasn’t clear,” Blake said, as they crossed the threshold.

“Magnificent,” Jenna said, looking around the Great Hall, as best she could in the light of dozens of lamps and hundreds of candles. The lines of the house were classic. Complex designs were inlaid in the marble floor. The many thick wood doors were richly carved. The high, coffered ceiling’s plasterwork was elaborate. The house reminded Jenna of her aunt’s house on Morphaniel. That made her feel a little better even though she didn’t much like her aunt (who had once refused to bail her out when Jenna had had the most pressing need to be elsewhere).

“Your host will not be able to meet you today, sir,” the housemaid said, bobbing a rigid-backed curtsey to Blake. “He has been unavoidably detained. Please select your accommodations, and then come down to the dining room. Refreshments will be offered.”

Blake was at first nettled and then amused that Vila had appropriated the best bedroom for himself. After all, they’d be gone in a few hours, or at worst overnight, so it didn’t matter. Blake took a bedroom in the middle, checked to see if the door could be locked, and then went to see how Jenna and Gan were feeling. He was mildly embarrassed to see Jenna leaning forward on a dressing table, looking into the mirror and trying to apply the lipstick she produced from her tunic in the flickering light of a kerosene lamp. It seemed a rather intimate act, as if she wanted an audience for the result but not the process. 

Although their destination had been described as a research station, Blake concluded that it looked like a country house. He had been in enough to them to surmise where the dining room would have to be located. Jenna, Cally, Gan and Vila followed him. 

The dining room was dark-paneled. The thick carpet was damson, with a needlepoint rug near the fireplace. Dark velvet drapes were drawn back part-way over lace curtains. Even though the wall sconces were mirrored, to reflect the candles, and even though the magnificent chandelier was supplemented by a dozen lamps, it was hard to see. (Gan stumbled against a chair leg and suppressed a curse.)

The long mahogany table held a centerpiece made of a circle of mirror, with ten small figures cast in silvery metal (Phibians running, dancing, crouching, posing with spraddled legs and threatening claws). 

Vila leaned forward, picked up one of the figures, and turned it around. He answered the glares by putting down the figure. “What? It isn’t even valuable,” he said.

“If you were planning to keep your hand in, well, don’t,” Jenna said. The floor shivered, there was a hum like the purr of a gigantic and sated leopard, and the lights came on.

It was now possible to discern a tantalus on the sideboard. Vila snatched the first one in the row of four, filled one of the glasses, and held up the cut-crystal decanter. “Shall I be Mum?”

The others sat down. Jenna nodded, and Vila poured her a glass of whatever it was. Cally and Gan shook their heads No, and Blake put his hand over the crystal goblet at his place. Gan poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher on the table, drank most of it at a gasp, and passed the pitcher to Cally. 

One of the maids offered Blake a platter. He divided the number of slices of—he wasn’t sure if it was meat or vat protein in some sort of thick sauce—by the number of crew members. There were enough slices for at least two apiece. The other maid held a vegetable dish in each hand. Blake helped himself to potatoes and green peas. “I know that Mr. Owen is not here,” he said. “But where is Shivan? Has he arrived already?”

“Yes, sir. But he is very ill,” said the maid with the platter. “He is confined to his room. We shall return later, with the pudding. You may take coffee in the drawing room.”

“And Ensor? We have the power cells he needs, and I’m sure he would like to have them as soon as possible. He was most insistent.”

“He, too, is indisposed and bedridden.”

“Yes, of course, that’s why we’re here. We’ve brought what he needs to fix his pacemaker.”

“I don’t know anything about that, sir,” said the other maid. “You’d have to ask Mr. Owen, when you see him.”

After the servants left, the Liberator crew addressed the food with differing degrees of enthusiasm. “This isn’t so bad,” Blake said. “Rather more flavorful than some of our ship’s stores.” 

“You’ll feel better when you’ve had a hot meal,” Cally said encouragingly. “All right for some,” Vila said, poking at the food on his plate with a fork held in the hand that didn’t hold the glass. Cally blushed and looked down. Gan drank another glass of water. 

Jenna studied the oval silver breadbasket. “Rusks,” she said. “Not fresh bread. I don’t know what that means; perhaps it’s just hard to resupply this place in the storm season.” One of the maids brought in a tray of dishes of apricots and cream. “Tinned,” Jenna said, swallowing a mouthful and putting down her spoon across the dessert plate. 

“I’ll go and see Shivan and Ensor,” Blake said, when the maid left. “The rest of you, search the house, see if there are any anti-radiation drugs. And see if you can find that contraption of Ensor’s. We’ll meet back here in fifteen minutes.”

Blake went down the corridor, noting that several bedrooms were empty, their doors standing open. Across from the bedrooms the crew had selected, one door was nearly but not entirely closed. Although the lights had come back on, the room was dim. Blake peered in and could see a figure huddled beneath sheets and blankets. The linen gleamed white against midnight-dark blankets. Near the headboard, a mass of bandages turned the figure’s head into the ball for some monstrous sport.

Blake tapped on the door. “Are you Shivan? Or Ensor? I’m Blake, we’ve—that is, my crew and I—have come to help you.” 

A weak voice piped, “I am Shivan,” then trailed off into a vicious cough that made Blake wince. “Don’t turn on the light, it hurts my eyes,” Shivan said querulously. 

“I’m glad we met,” Blake said. “When we’re back on my ship, and when we’ve got you medical treatment, you must tell me all about the old days, in the Freedom Party. I wish we could swap tales, exchange reminiscences, but…I simply can’t remember.” 

“Are we leaving now? I can’t walk, you must carry me.”

“Not leaving just yet,” Blake said. “There are some other things I must do. But it will be soon. Do you need anything—food or water? Do you have any medications I can help you take?”

“The maids help me with those things. But you mustn’t hang about. I don’t have long to live. I can sense it. I have a premonition.”

“Nonsense!” Blake said heartily. “No one can predict the future. We’ll have you right as rain in no time.”

“Acid rain,” Shivan said. “Right as a rain of blood and a rain of frogs.”

“Rest now,” Blake said, backing uneasily into the corridor. He thought that perhaps Cally could convey a bit of comfort to his cruelly depleted comrade. 

Blake returned to the drawing room, awaiting scouting reports from his crew. “I’ve found Shivan,” Blake said. “He’s very ill, very weak. Have you seen Ensor? What’s the laboratory like?”

“Someone’s been telling porkies,” Vila said. “We’ve been all up and down, and the stairs were a treat, I can tell you, but there’s no laboratory here. And I didn’t see Ensor, or anybody else.”

“Might be outbuildings on the grounds, though,” Gan said. “We haven’t looked. Perhaps later, if the weather clears, or tomorrow if we’re still here. Anything the Federation wants that much would be worth our taking a bit of trouble as well.”

“At least we won’t starve,” Cally said. “There are very extensive stores of all sorts of preserved foods. And we’re under cover, of course, and the furnace is operational and there’s a supply of water.”

“Perhaps there’ll be a tea caddy and some condensed milk,” Gan said. “If there is, I’ll brew up. I could murder a cup of tea.”

He froze in his tracks when, after a blast of recorded music crackling with static, a thundery basso said, “Be upstanding!”

“Well, that’d be a change,” Jenna said, then stopped in shock when the voice said, “Prisoners at the bar, how do you plead?”

Everyone said some variation of “What?” The windows rattled as a high wind drove torrents of rain against the panes. There was a huge clap of thunder, and the lights went out. Cally squinted in the new darkness and found matches to re-light the candles in the sconces. That gave enough light for her to turn up the flames on the kerosene lamps, and pass them around to her crewmates. Their eyes looked huge and darkly shadowed, lamps held at chest-height.

“You are all condemned,” the voice said. “You are all criminals. You were justly sentenced to a lifetime of exile in prison, but you fled. Now your lives are forfeit to the law, for your escape and for all the murders committed since then. Even in your own rotten underworld, you were betrayers. There was no honor among thieves. You took what you wanted and killed everyone who was an obstacle to your path. And since then, those of you were merely criminals have become traitors as well.” 

“Who’s speaking?” Gan said sharply. 

“I daresay it’s a recording,” Jenna said. “Tinned, like the apricots.” 

“We’ll search,” Blake said. “Come on, take the lamps. We’ll stay together.”

In the pantry, there was a clear resin box, perhaps half a meter square and half that in height. Lights flashed where there would have been cream in a Victoria sponge. 

They stared dully, without much surprise. After all, it was a similar box that consigned them to Cygnus Alpha. 

Blake thought, it’s no pleasure to be the last of my party cell to survive, but I must carry on for them. Carry on for Shivan. Perhaps I was spared to bear witness. He could feel Cally thinking, That is true. I have failed. I should not have been left alone.

Gan thought it wasn’t fair, but then what else was new?

Vila thought, they’d have got those names out of me if they’d tortured me, so why not save time and get done before tea break?

Jenna thought, hard cheese on those Decimas, but I’d come a long way for those diamonds and I didn’t propose to leave without them.

“Time to go. We’ll get Shivan, making a stretcher if necessary,” Blake said. “And Ensor, if he turns up.”

“We can use the curtains,” Jenna said. “Good-quality velvet, perhaps a bit dusty.” 

“And then we’ll get out of here.” Blake raised his bracelet. “Avon, come in. We’ll all be teleporting, with one or two more, in about twenty minutes.” 

“He won’t half gloat,” Vila said. 

“Avon,” Blake said calmly. “Come in.” 

“He won’t half gloat wherever he’s buggered off to with the Liberator,” Vila amended. “Isn’t it funny how no matter how bad you think it is, it turns out it’s really a lot worse?”

“No!” Cally said. “It’s not Avon refusing to answer. Blake’s bracelet isn’t functioning.” With little hope, she tried her own bracelet, and Gan and Jenna tested their own and the spare bracelets. “The storm has interfered with transmissions. Or…this place is shielded somehow to prevent communications with the outside world.” 

“That was a good idea of yours about tea,” Blake said. “Come on, Gan, let’s see if we can make some.” When they returned, they found that Vila had found a box of games in the sideboard. Vila and Cally were engaged in a rather desultory game of draughts by candlelight, and Jenna was playing solitaire. Blake wished he had something to read, and the house seemed that it would have a library, but he didn’t want to go off on his own through the pitch-black, echoing corridors. 

Cally pulled her chair into a corner of the room to meditate, leaving the rest to a surprisingly uproarious game of pinochle. Everyone jumped as the long-case clock in the hall chimed ten. Jenna yawned. 

“We might as well get some sleep,” Blake said. “Goodnight. No, I don’t suppose it will be. But it’s odd how those civilized forms survive even in quite barbarous situations. Lock your doors of course, try to get some rest, and when it’s light we’ll study the terrain and assess our options.”

Jenna, Gan, Vila, and Blake had all managed to collapse into unsatisfactory sleep when they heard a single scream and the sound of a struggle.

TEN  
Cally, clamping one hand over her mouth to keep nausea at bay, pressed a handkerchief to her neck with her other hand. The blood leaking from the puncture wounds was already beginning to clot.

The parlourmaid moaned and thrashed her limbs convulsively. Her neat, starched cap fell off. 

“Mutoid,” Gan said.

“Thanks for stating the obvious,” Jenna said. She found another handkerchief, and the carafe of water on Cally’s bedside table. Then she knocked over the carafe and watched the water stream over the tabletop and onto the ashes-of-roses carpeting. She put her arm around Cally’s shoulders. “Let’s go to the kitchen and get some bottled water. Perhaps there’s a first-aid kit.” (Although, she thought, in this vicious fun-house, I don’t know if we can trust that either.)

The mutoid’s last words were “The serum was not suitable,” which is hardly the thing to inscribe on a war memorial.

Jenna found a wheeled cart in the kitchen. Working together, they managed to bundle the mutoid’s body onto the cart, and to push the cart to the edge of the woods near the house.

_Ten little Phibians going out to dine, one overate himself and then there were nine._

NINE  
“You don’t half look rough,” Vila said.

“Shut it, Vila,” Jenna said. She looked a bottle of wine up and down, then shrugged and opened it with the corkscrew on her pocketknife. 

“It’s all right, Jenna,” Gan said. He leaned the spade he was carrying against one of the dining room chairs. “I think he meant it sympathetically.” Under other circumstances he might have worried about the dirt on the pretty needlepoint rug. 

“Look,” Jenna said. “One of the little figures is gone.” 

“I still didn’t take it,” Vila said.

“Then who did?” There was no answer.

“What have you been doing?” Blake asked Gan. 

“It didn’t work,” Gan said. “I tried to dig a grave, but the ground’s too hard.” (And I’m not strong enough, he thought. I always was before.)

“What for?” Vila said. “I mean, really, what, not who. Just leave it behind when we go, or chuck it on the fire.”

Gan shrugged. “Even a mutoid was human, once. And it’s not what she deserves, it’s what we do. Human beings always honor the dead. Or try to. It’s like falling in love: it’s the way you feel, not some sort of contest where you choose the worthiest person. And we might be here for quite some time, it can’t be healthy to have a corpse about.”

They went outside and took turns digging. It was tacitly agreed that a short and shallow grave would be quite good enough. Gan had the last shift. He sat down, his back against a tree, to recover his breath. 

After a few minutes, he heard footsteps, and looked up. Perhaps someone had come to see how he was, perhaps even bring him something to drink. That would be much appreciated, he was thirsty. “You?” Gan said. “What are you doing out here in the cold? Come on, I’ll walk you back to the house.” Gan thought that he was at least as much in need of support himself. Well, it would take as long as it would take.

Gan was surprised to be the target of a vicious attack, a hail of kicks and punches. He did his best, weakened as he was, to fight back. His emotions were far from weak, and his blood sang as he used his height and bulk to trap the attacker. He raised his hands to squeeze his opponent’s throat, but before he could tighten his grip, a vessel burst in his brain, and he toppled over, quite dead.

_Nine little Phibians cursing at their fate, one fused his Limiter and then there were eight._

EIGHT  
The cart was still there, but the survivors tacitly agreed to find a nicer gravesite for their comrade, as far away as they could carry Gan’s body and still have the energy to dig a higher-quality grave. Cally took Vila’s hand. Blake nodded to acknowledge the inspiration and they formed a ring once the soil had been removed and put back. 

Blake said that Gan had been a good and brave man and they would miss him, always. Cally translated some relevant portions of the Auron burial service; even as abbreviated, this took quite a while. 

Afterwards, Jenna couldn’t stand feeling dirty. She shivered at the thought of being vulnerable and naked in the bath, no matter how much furniture she piled against the doors to her room and the ensuite bathroom. But she was tempted by the prospect of luxuriating in hot water scented with some of the costly essences displayed on the bathroom shelves.

She compromised by filling the bath with warm water, stepping in, and rapidly applying shampoo and soap. She quickly dried off with one of the huge, plush white towels on the heated towel-rack. She felt a pang of nostalgia for the glories of the Liberator, but acknowledged that they did not include high-thread-count bath sheets. 

Jenna dressed hurriedly. Her clothes felt mustier than ever, but once they were back on, and her most comfortable boots zipped up, she felt safer. Or at least that she had done everything in her power to take care of herself.

She took out the bath plug. Clumps of her hair had fallen out. She didn’t bother cleaning them up.

“I’ll take the first patrol,” she told the group glumly assembled in the drawing room. Port and cigars were consumed (Vila seemed grimly determined to consume as many spoils of war as possible), but there was no conversation. 

Jenna walked the grounds, shivering a little in the autumn air. She made a sketch map in her mind of the huge house, brooding near a high, sheer cliff. A long way down, waves pounded the pebble beach, and spray foamed up. The sight and sound hypnotized her, so she barely registered the footsteps behind her until the push sent her past the edge of the cliff and down toward the beach.

Jenna had always wanted to fly. At last, she had eliminated the middleman. She pulled her legs up into a tuck, and reached her arms overhead. For seconds, it was the greatest bliss of her life.

_Eight little Phibians looking up at Heaven, one said she’d fly there and then there were seven._

SEVEN  
Blake balanced the tea tray on one hand and pushed the door open. He wondered what to tell Shivan to minimize the horror of the situation. 

Blake discovered that the situation had got quite a bit worse, but that Shivan did not require an explanation. It had been hard to look at Shivan’s monstrously swollen beehive of bandages. Now it was a mask of blood, and more blood from his wide-gaping slit throat had cascaded onto the white linen. There must have been quarts of blood on the blankets, judging by the thickness of the stench of blood, but the stains hardly showed on dark wool in the darkened room. 

Blake shook his head, and locked the door with the key that had been hung on a board in the kitchen.

Another figurine had been removed from the dining room table.

_Seven little Phibians, chopping up some sticks. One chopped himself in half, and then there were six._

SIX  
“At least the stove works on bottled gas,” Blake said, parceling out slices of tinned ham that he had heated up. He found a silver cover and put it over Cally’s plate to keep it warm. “Let’s have some food, and then I’ll have a look at the generator, try to get it going again. If I can find any tools, that is. I daresay if Avon were here, he would be able to do something with a tin opener and a butter knife.”

“Speak of the devil,” Avon said, puffing a little with the effort of pushing the heavy doors open and then shut. 

“How’d you get here?” Vila asked. “The bracelets don’t work.”

“I’d noticed,” Avon said. “Tell me where the lavatory is, and we’ll discuss it on my return.”

Avon vomited, rinsed his mouth, cleaned his teeth with the toothbrush he brought with him, and shook a capsule out of a bottle taken from Liberator’s infirmary. There were eleven left in the bottle, which he thought would be enough to go around. 

“I ordered you to stay with the ship,” Blake said, his eyes lighting up despite himself. “At least you might have got away.”

“That’s a new one,” Vila said. “I can tell my kiddies—if I live long enough to have any—“

“Or if anyone would have you,” Avon said, in a nastier tone than their routine patter.

“—I’ll tell them that Avon was the rat who climbed onto the sinking ship.”

Avon turned to reply to Blake. “And I disregarded your order. Fortunately, as this seems to be shaping up to the biggest fiasco in all Chiantishire.” He held up the pill bottle. “Here, Vila, these won’t be a cure, but at least I found some anti-nausea capsules in the medbay. Have one, and pass them out to Jenna and Gan.”

“Avon, they won’t be needing them,” Blake said. 

“Christ! What happened?” 

“We’re not sure. We found Gan dead, out on the lawn. It might have been radiation sickness, or overexertion. But Cally was attacked by a mutoid—she survived, and don’t worry, we put paid to it—so of course we can’t rule out the possibility of foul play. We found Jenna at the bottom of the cliff. If she hadn’t worn those scarlet trousers, we might not even have seen her. Perhaps she chose to end her life because these circumstances are so unpropitious. Or, of course, she might have been pushed.”

“Of course she was pushed,” Vila said. “You left out the best part, or the best worst part I suppose. We’d just got here and started cursing Thomas Cook’s when there was a recording calling us a right shower and we were all for the jump. Condemned to death, for treachery and what-have-you.” 

“What did it say about me?” Avon asked. 

Blake closed his eyes and tilted his head back, trying to remember. “D’you know, I don’t think it mentioned any of us by name.”

“Perhaps, then, it didn’t know precisely who would arrive.” Avon, his hands clasped behind his back, started to pace around the drawing room. He felt much better. “All that is needed is to apply a bit of logic to the situation. Where is the musical box—the thing with the recording device?”

“It’s in the pantry,” Vila said. 

Avon looked at it, and lifted the device, looking at it from all sides. “It’s obviously a computer.”

“Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it,” Vila said. “Computers are great huge things stuck to the floor.”

“Can you turn it on? Or, well, get it to do something,” Blake said, noting the flashing lights. Avon continued pressing places on the casing. “I can’t find an on/off switch,” he said. “Perhaps this depression at the top is used with a triggering device.”

“Which we haven’t got,” Vila said. “A triggering device, that is. We’re not short of depression. Maybe that’ll be how we’ll get out of here, neighbors popping by to borrow a cup of depression. I like a cup of kindness for Auld Lang Syne better.” 

“We’ll take this thing with us, put it in the quarantine hatch, and see if we can figure it out there. Perhaps Zen will have some information to offer. Any luck on the anti-radiation drugs?” Avon asked. The attempt at casualness failed. 

“I’m sorry,” Blake said, gently touching Avon’s arm. Avon pulled his arm away, then tried the teleport bracelet on his own wrist. “Liberator? Come in, Liberator. Zen? Can you hear me?”

“Because of the storm, electrics don’t work here,” Vila said. “Anyway, what good’ll it do even if the bracelet’s OK?”

Avon lifted his shoulder bag from the sideboard. He took out two more bracelets and handed them to Blake and, with a perceptible delay, to Vila. “I set the teleport to do regular sweeps,” he said. “One of us could, theoretically, have teleported back, then teleported the others while one flew the shuttle. As it stands, we can all fit into the shuttle.”

“Thank you, Avon. Cally’s on patrol,” Blake said. “Let’s go and get her.”

“Wouldn’t it have been better to stay together?” Avon asked. 

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” Vila said. “I mean, this is a small island, but it’s bigger than the house. There could be all sorts out there. Wolves. Decimas. There’s definitely murderers. And someone keeps trousering the little statues, just to give us the collywobbles.”

Cally, afraid to hope, cautiously approached the new feature on the landscape. It looked a good deal like one of the Liberator shuttles, and even had the same ID number painted on one flank, which argued at the very least attention to detail. She opened the door cautiously. 

Everything in the shuttle’s cockpit had been smashed (Cally reflexively decided that something rounded, like a dowel or wooden chair leg, had been used for the purpose), and the seats had been ripped from their moorings and tipped over. Her wrist was at her mouth quicker than she could remember that there was no help from that quarter. 

She jumped down from the shuttle, dreading the return to the house and having to give Blake more bad news. 

The poisoned dart from the Selmarenese blowpipe, fired from a nearby tree, struck her in the throat. Cally died instantly, before Blake, Avon, and Vila reached her.

The mutoid climbed down from the tree, gratefully stripped off the servile livery, and trudged to her point of deployment. She recovered Orac’s key from the pocket of her apron. There was nowhere in her uniform to carry it, so she held her hand, palm-up, as if she were carrying an engraved invitation on a silver salver. 

Avon knelt by Cally’s body, touched the side of her throat and then lifted one wrist for confirmation. He shook his head. 

Vila started crying awkwardly. Blake hugged him. Avon stood up, and stood apart from them for a minute. He couldn’t see Blake looking at him, thinking, I wish this was you in my arms. I wish you had your arms around me. 

Avon walked away. In the house, he spilled the cigarettes out of a silver box onto the sideboard. Then he looked at it in disgust. It wouldn’t be anywhere near large enough. He started to tidy up, then left the cigarettes where they fell and the box with its lid gaping open. He didn’t stop to count the small figures on the centerpiece.

In the corner was a glass case full of silver trophies. He smashed a pane with his elbow and took one, shaking off the shards of glass. Wanton destruction of expensive things was a small pleasure, but probably the last one on offer. He went to the generator, topped up the tank, and took the gas can. The generator would probably keep running until this was over. If not, they could burn things in the fireplace. Avon returned to the dining room and took the heavy silver lighter.

“We’ll burn her body,” he said. Blake and Vila nodded imperceptibly. For more reasons than one, they couldn’t dig another grave. 

“Blake, why don’t you take the funeral? You’ve had a chance to get good at it,” Avon said.

“I’m glad that you still have the energy to be cruel to me,” Blake said. “I should hate to think this experience has changed you in any way.”

Blake breathed in to steady himself. “Cally taught me that, to use my breath for centering,” he said. “It wasn’t something that the Freedom Party did. Cally of Auron—her clonepod name was Seaspray, by the way—could have stopped at home with her clonesisters. She would have been safe. But she went a long way to fight for the freedom of strangers. She never counted the cost. And now she has died as a hero, and we honor her for that. But anyone could have done that. We honor her for what was unique about her. What was unearthly, and what she created as an individual. Before she sacrificed her life, she saved our lives many times. And the lives that she saved, she made better. Fire is fierce and pure, like her.”

A few hours later, they came back to bury what was now a silver urn.

_Six little Phibians, playing with a hive. A bumblebee stung one, and then there were five._

FIVE   
When he heard the key in the lock, Vila realized that it only went one way. His success in opening doors did nothing at all to frustrate others from doing the same.  
He had tried hiding in the dark in the wardrobe, which was far too realistic, so he opened the door and crouched, folded, in the kneehole of the small pigeonhole desk. There was scarcely room to lift his arm, but soon enough the bottle was empty so that didn’t matter.

“It’s you, isn’t it, Avon?” Vila said. “You’ve come to shoot me but I don’t know why, I’ve always been your friend.” Vila knew it would have to be Avon, he must have showed up earlier and hung around the way Blake always said he did when he told that story. Because there wasn’t anybody else. It had to be a live person. It couldn’t have been that dead bloke, Blake’s old friend, or the dead mutoid or dead Gan or dead Jenna or dead Cally. 

“No,” the killer said, homing the Lazeron bolt to the voice. 

Then he regretted it. Why ease the condemned man’s last moment, even a little bit? It was as soft as giving someone a posh meal that he was in no position to digest. If you wanted to go easy on him, why bother to top him in the first place? 

Blake was in the drawing room, playing solitaire with the cards that his crew had recently touched. He couldn’t feel any traces of them, although he was sure that a Federation forensics team would be able to recover their fingerprints. Avon was in the kitchen, spreading sardine butter on three plates of rusks. 

Blake and Avon rushed into the corridor when they heard the brief scream and a soft thump of a body crumpling, but not very far. “I think that’s Vila’s room, directly overhead,” Blake said. They climbed the stairs, Avon leaning heavily on the rail.

They lifted the body onto the bed. Blake neatened the hair on Vila’s forehead. They straightened out his limbs and closed his eyes and lifted the sheet and blanket over his body.

“Goodbye, Vila,” Blake said. “Vila *Restal*. I’m sorry for the times we laughed at you without realizing how much you strengthened us and put heart into us. And you needn’t have worried. When you needed to be brave, you were.”

“Oh, what do words matter?” Avon said. “What does it matter what anyone says, it’s all lies and manipulation.” He wanted to stalk out of the room but he turned his back and walked cautiously, it wouldn’t do at all to fall over or (worse) trip. 

Blake locked the door, wondering if it had been St. Peter who carried the keys. If that was Blake’s job now, he would send Vila someplace nice. Someplace he would enjoy. 

Blake caught up with Avon’s slow progress down the corridor. Perhaps some assistance in ambulation would be accepted if it came in the form of an embrace.

“Stay the night with me,” Blake asked. It wasn’t necessary for him to say that he didn’t want to be alone. Avon wanted to say that he didn’t either, that he’d rather die by Blake’s side than survive with prospects of prosperity, that Blake needn’t feel guilty that Avon was dying of radiation poisoning and Blake wasn’t, or that Blake had maneuvered Avon into a position where he was likely to be murdered before he could die of radiation poisoning, and that it didn’t matter because one way or another Blake would have got Avon killed anyway. But there wasn’t any point in saying any of that when there wouldn’t be enough time even for another session of the argument, much less for a reconciliation. So he just said, “All right, if you like.”

Blake wanted to say “Go right ahead, put it all on me, pretend that it doesn’t matter to you.” He didn’t, because you wouldn’t want that to be the epitaph for a stillborn relationship (as if such misbegotten things had monumental tombs). 

_Five little Phibians tried to bar the door. One had a lockpick, and then there were four._

FOUR  
Avon woke up and unwound himself from Blake’s arms. He knew that, like Kekule solving the mystery of chemical structure by dreaming of a snake, he had dreamed the answer. It was the only possible one. The pain inflicted by the dead was purely in the immaterial sphere. They could not rise to brandish daggers or poison drinks or set fires. No one had a better alibi than a dead man. Now only one suspect remained without an alibi. Blake hadn’t had much time to run up the stairs, shoot Vila, and run down again, but then it wouldn’t have taken long.

Avon had told Blake a hundred times that Blake had gone mad, and evidently he had finally obliged. Or, someone had. He wasn’t quite sure. But he already knew that his death and Blake’s would be linked, somehow. And he knew that everyone he loved died. He knew that he had killed a great many people. But always in self-defense. The only logical conclusion was that Blake had killed all the others, and there was only one way for Avon to save his own life. He couldn’t have explained why he still wanted to save it, but he did. 

There was a line of light between the not-quite-closed curtains. Before Blake could wake up, Avon reached under the mattress and pulled out the Liberator gun that he had hidden. He rested the barrel against Blake’s heart and pulled the trigger. 

_Four little Phibians, utterly at sea. A red herring swallowed one, and then there were three._

THREE  
Avon abandoned the gun and left the bedroom. He walked out the front door. The pathetic fallacy was not in session. He was neither mocked by brilliant sunshine nor mirrored by a hurricane. It was just a grey, rather chilly day. 

He was finally alone, without the endless shrill and tiresome demands of his crewmates. The canned goods in the pantry would last for decades. It was nearly as good as having the Liberator all to himself. No, he corrected himself. That would be much better. He could go anywhere, do anything, spend the wealth from the Treasure Room. Avon couldn’t think of any way of getting off this island. Even if removal came at the hands of rescuers (and who could they be?) and not arresting officers, he didn’t think the radiation damage could be reversed. 

As Avon paced, he heard his boots crunching through a carpet of fallen leaves. He looked down at an endless supply of gold. His foot slipped, and he landed hard, face-down. He managed to turn over, but the effort exhausted him. He considered just lying there until he died, which wouldn’t take long. But, unlike Blake, he’d never had much enthusiasm for going Outside. Inside the house, for at least a while, it would be warm.

Avon went back to his own bedroom. The bed where he hadn’t slept the previous night was still tidy. Of course it hadn’t changed. The chair was neatly squared up to the small writing-table. 

There was one new thing, though. The bedroom, although much larger than a Federation holding cell, was not immense. Avon really thought that he would have noticed the noose, strung from a hook in the ceiling, if it had been there yesterday.

Avon, straining with the effort, carried the chair to the center of the room and squared it up with the shadow of the noose in the center.

Travis, grinning all over his own face (the mask now discarded), stood at the door and watched. This was not as good as seeing Blake’s corpse (and Travis, at least, did check). And even if Blake had been alive, Travis’ bullets that obliterated Blake’s arm and then his face would have done the trick. 

Kicking away the chair didn’t provide much of a drop. It took a long time. Travis watched it until he got bored. Blake’s death was the main course of the feast, and then Travis toyed with the savory for a while (devils on horseback?) and then reported in to his designated station, as a digestive.

_Three little Phibians, wondering what to do, one went and hanged himself, and then there were two._

TWO, ONE  
As Travis surmised, Servalan was booked in at a luxury hotel at the nearest planet that had such a thing. He would have been more than grateful for a hearty meal and a good night’s sleep, and would be willing to put up with having his toenails painted if that was what it took. As he also surmised, however, he was required to pilot the pursuit ship (himself, having lost his mutoids) to take Servalan and one of her new acquisitions onboard her other new acquisition. His total immersion course in Servalese had taught him useful phrases such as “Sod them all,” “Where’s mine?” “Get it sorted” and “It’s all your fault.”

“Oh, Travis, this is splendid,” Supreme Commander Servalan said, stretching out on a Flight Deck sofa, propping up her high-heeled sandals on the cushion. “At last, you’ve made me proud.” She wondered if she could get away with telling Travis that she would make him consort and co-ruler. She decided that even Travis wasn’t a big enough fool to believe that, so saying it would be counterproductive. 

“Why did you even do it?” Travis burst out. “They were dying anyway.”

“That’s true of all human life, Travis. I hadn’t time to wait. Blake and Cally might have gone on forever. But you’re the one who killed them. You’ve done well. I shall see that…well, at any rate, I’ll send a memo putting in a recommendation for your promotion, once we get back to Earth.”

“Not bloody likely,” Travis said.

“Travis, how insolent of you to doubt me, of course I’ll ask that you receive the proper reward.” She wondered if cooing “naughty” instead of rapping out “insolent” would have worked better.

Under the auspices of the Federation, Travis had lost an eye and an arm, been shot, stabbed, captured, interrogated, and tortured often enough for the incidents to mix into a khaki blur. He had been guilty of everything from operating vehicles too fast for conditions to personalized murder and interrogations that violated the Judges’ Rules to genocide, said, “No, not bloody likely we’ll ever get to Earth. I’m done, and now so are you.” 

Travis wrenched out Orac’s key before it could finish its warning about the imminent entry into the cloud of fluid particles around Terminal.   
Zen said, “Information…” just at the moment Travis said, “The course that I gave you. Do it!”

_Two little Phibians flying to the Sun, one put his foot down and then there were none._


End file.
